


Lessons Learned

by formosus_iniquis



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter/Funhaus RPF
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-22
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-26 02:58:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7557454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/formosus_iniquis/pseuds/formosus_iniquis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Basically it’s one part Ryan gets off on people being smarter than him, and one part Meg and Gavin want to sleep with Ryan but he’s already with Michael and Lindsay so they try to share and jealousy becomes polyamory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lessons Learned

Meg could be called a lot of things but dumb didn’t even come close to being on the list.

Naive, maybe. Oblivious, occasionally. But dumb, definitely not. 

So she noticed that Ryan got a little fidgety when she spent more than a minute or two talking about tech or something but, well, she was a girl in the games industry. Meg was more than used to guys getting fidgety and annoyed if she spent too long talking uninterrupted. Maybe she should have known better, cause Ryan wasn’t most guys, but she had much more experience with the former than the latter.

She almost felt bad when she called him on it. 

Meg really liked Ryan; but it was starting to piss her off when she could see him shifting in his seat, like she was boring him by explaining the small differences between the Oculus and the new VR set some third party is trying to crowdfund. 

When she couldn’t take it anymore she asked, “Am I boring you, Haywood?” Meg managed to make it sound like a joke, they were still live after all.

He turned red so quickly she was actually worried he was going to hurt himself, “N-no, I’s good, fine, not bored.”

Meg gave him her very best ‘I’m gonna figure you out’ look while Gus laughed and Ryan tried to find a place to look that wasn’t anyone at the table or one of the cameras.

Meg found herself watching Ryan carefully for almost a whole week, trying to figure out if it was something wrong with Ryan or if it was something wrong with her. 

Which maybe wasn’t her best idea. She knew Ryan was attractive objectively, but after spending a week doing nothing but carefully watching him she found herself a little infatuated. She wouldn’t do anything about it, obviously, she was dating Gavin, was very happy dating Gavin, was very in love with Gavin. She still couldn’t help but think about what it could be like seeing him, Ryan was the cutest dork and observation only made it more obvious.

After a week of watching, Meg was definitely ready to give up. She really didn’t need to know why Ryan did anything. She didn’t know why Ryan did anything, all she’d gotten from her creepy staring were feelings she didn’t know what to do with.

She just wanted to give up and wait until those weird feelings went away.

So the irony wasn’t lost on Meg when she finally got her answer when Ryan was watching her.

They were just waiting until it was time to go live with the Patch. Meg was trying to finish recording and Ryan was sitting in a chair across from her, off the set, messing around on his phone. She didn’t even think he was really listening. Until she hit the technical portion of her story, and Meg noticed that he was fidgeting in his seat again as he avoided looking at her for a whole new reason. 

But Ryan didn’t have the desk to hide behind now, and his awful dad jeans hid his current problem about as well as Gavin’s much tighter jeans did.

Meg didn’t know what to do with the information that had suddenly been presented to her. Well, she did, but she had decided she was going to ignore those feelings she was having for Ryan, so she did the same with this. Ignored it, filed it away for later use. Maybe it was something she could use to tease him mercilessly about later.

That later she was waiting for came a lot sooner than she thought it would. 

It came in the form of Gavin, nervously mentioning that for all the fuss the Turnwood jokes had brought that he really wouldn’t mind if something came out of it. It took her a minute to understand him through his mumbling, but when she did she  _ really _ liked what she heard. 

She never expected that Gavin would think Ryan was cute too, or that he would want to do something about those thoughts, but she couldn’t say she wasn’t excited.

When the two of them brought it up with Ryan - or rather when Meg brought it up while Gavin stood behind her not looking at Ryan at all - she  _ didn’t _ like what she heard as much. “Yeah, that’d be, I’d really like that,” he said. Before she even had the chance to break into the grin she felt coming he added, “But I should really check with Michael and Lindsay first.”

“What?” the choked sound was the first thing Gavin had managed to say since she’d dragged him with her over to Ryan.

Ryan looked bashful as he shrugged and said, “I mean we haven’t said we’re exclusive or anything, but I really feel like I should check with them since we’ve been kinda fooling around.”

Meg felt like her whole world had been rocked. First there was what she was currently calling Ryan’s knowledge kink, and now she was finding out that he was sleeping with two of her best friends; and what’s worse she hadn’t had a fucking clue. Nothing happened in this office without  _ someone _ noticing, but this had slipped by for who knows how long.

Something inside of her snapped and she grabbed Gavin roughly by the arm, dragging him behind her toward the Achievement Hunter office with Ryan trailing nervously behind them. She had questions that needed answers and she wasn’t going to wait for Ryan to ask them. 

Meg managed to pull Michael out of his chair with a single hand on the back of his shirt. She pulled him up by the collar and dragged him along with her, shifting her grip from his shirt to his arm once he was up. 

There must have been a look in her eye or maybe it was just the way she had three grown men following behind her, but everyone but Lindsay quickly filed out of the  B-team office when they saw her. Which left them standing there looking at Lindsay’s confused face as she stood with her tight grip still around Gavin’s arm, a hand just now releasing Michael, and Ryan standing nervously behind them all.

“Have you been sleeping with, Ryan?” It came out as an accusation, but she wanted to blame that on shock. It took more than one hand to count the number of times she’d been outright accused of hooking up with Ryan, and that was something most people in the company could say. So she was feeling a little blindsided that Michael and Lindsay actually were and no one had called this one. 

Michael had moved to hide behind his wife by this point, and they both looked at Meg with matching looks of confusion. “Um, yeah,” Lindsay said, the Joneses were looking a little red in the face and she could have maybe phrased her question a little better. “Is that a problem?”

“We do have a life outside of the two of you,” Michael said, “we fuck around with Ryan sometimes, on the weekends when we aren’t hanging out with you.”

“ _ We _ want to sleep with Ryan,” Gavin said with his usual amount of tact. 

Ryan, for his part, looked like he was ready for the ground to open up and take him away from all of this. He managed a deep sigh and an embarrassed sounding, “We hadn’t said anything about exclusivity, so I didn’t want to answer without checking.”

“Fuck Ryan, we don’t own you, you’re a fucking person. Fuck whoever you want, christ.” Michael said.

Meg nodded, glad they settled things so quickly, she’d really expected a bigger fight between everyone than actually came. “Great,” she said, trailing a familiar hand down Ryan’s arm as she left the room, “if you’re interested you should come by this weekend.”

She left the room with quick steps as the four of them watched Meg leave in varying states of confusion. Meg pretended she couldn’t feel the equally confused looks she was getting from the remaining Achievement Hunters. It had her glad for once that her desk was so far away from Gavin, Ryan, Michael, and Lindsay. Meg had never been as sure of anything as she was that there was going to be some kind of fallout for the stunt she just pulled, and that it would be recorded by someone. She might have been part of the cause of the situation, but she really didn’t want to be part of it. She just hoped whatever happened it didn’t end up changing Ryan’s mind for him.

***

Meg wouldn't call what she was doing skipping, but she definitely had an extra bounce in her step when she came back into work that Monday. She’d been very pleased to find that whatever had happened when she left Ryan in the hands of the Achievement Hunters, that he still showed up at their house that weekend.

It meant riding high all week. Meg found it easy to brush off the weird looks she kept getting from Lindsay in the kitchen or to sooth Gavin when he said that Michael hasn’t been acting the same around him. It was all pretty easy to ignore when she had the memory of what Ryan looked like flushed and panting in their bed.

It was a little harder to ignore how quickly her mood fell when Ryan turned down her invitation for a repeat performance, saying he’d already told Michael and Lindsay that he’d go over to theirs that weekend. He looked worried that he’d said something wrong, nervous in a way that was impressive for someone that was easily twice her size. So she did what she’d been doing for Gavin all week, reassured him that it was okay and they’d try again later.

Jealousy was a familiar feeling, the reason behind it right now was less so. She really didn’t think she had any reason to be jealous over someone she was actually seeing. Or, mostly seeing. Right now it seemed like Ryan was like their child of divorce, being passed back and forth, and they only got to see him on alternating weekends.

If she thought she was jealous when he told her he couldn’t come over, she almost lost her mind when he came up to her before the Patch was set to pre-record. He looked bashful, almost exactly like he’d looked when he came up to her desk asking if he could tag along to E3, “I know I’m supposed to be on with Ashley and Gus this week, but can you take my place?”

He had his hoodie zipped up as far as he could get it and was making a point not to look her in the eyes. “Sure Ry, but you have to tell me why.”

He unzipped the jacket just the smallest bit, and she could see a necklace of dark bruises on his neck and collarbone. He quickly zipped his jacket back up once he’d shown her, rubbing sheepishly at the back of his neck. “Lindsay got a little over zealous,” he chuckled awkwardly, “I don’t want to subject anyone to the amount of makeup it would take to cover them all.”

She was sure it didn’t sound sincere when she said, “Sure Ry, I’d be happy to help,” through her clenched teeth.

It seemed like she wasn’t the only one who’d been feeling a little jealous, Lindsay had clearly spent a lot of time marking the sensitive skin of Ryan’s neck - and Meg hadn’t expected to enjoy that thought as much as she did. Meg wasn’t blind, she knew Lindsay was gorgeous and now that Meg knew what sounds Ryan made when he got worked up, well, she’d started out jealous and now she was just wondering if it was creepy that she was imagining what his sex life was like with a different couple.

It was fine though. She could pretend that it was a normal to imagine the sex life of a man she was also with, this was still new ground for her after all, and for all she knew it could be. For now, she was just going to record the Patch for Ryan. Then, when it was time to record Free Play since he couldn’t bail out on that, she was going to blow tumblr’s god damn mind. If they thought the Meg/Ryan shit was bad before, they hadn’t seen anything yet.

It was her personal goal to have Ryan blushing like a preteen by the end of recording, and she was amazed by what it took to make it happen - calling attention to a dark hickey on his jawline that had yet to fade. Ryan gave as good as he got though, which Meg had some experience with now, and left her blushing just as badly.

He loitered around her desk after filming ended, lurking for long enough that she wondered if she was about to deal with some retaliation for her teasing - most of it was going to end up edited out, he really couldn’t be that upset. “You need something, Ryan?” she asked. 

“I’m just avoiding the office for a little while,” he said, “things have gotten... weird.”

“Weirder than normal, you mean?”

He laughed, “Yeah, weirder than normal. Lindsay won’t leave my side when she’s filming and Gavin and Michael are at eachother’s throats, and they keep bringing me in to settle their shit.”

“That is weird,” she said idly, she wasn’t really paying attention anymore. Ryan’s words had triggered something, a thought that was on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t quite figure out what it was.

“Ry-yan,” Michael’s voice scared away whatever thought she was trying to reach, “Geoff said if you don’t get back to record the Minecraft let’s play with us you’re fired.”

“And he sent  _ me  _ to tell him, Michael,” Gavin said, sounding whiny in a way that surprised her but she could feel that thought she had creeping back.

“I’m surprised he didn’t send you both to get a break from your bitching.” Ryan said. If he thought he was going to head off any of that complaining before it started then he clearly hadn’t been paying enough attention in the time he’d been working with the two of them.

“Ryan,” they both whined.

He sighed and tried to wave goodbye to Meg as Michael and Gavin each grabbed an arm to drag him away, sending a heated look to one another as they did. Something weird was happening and - much like Ryan’s secret kink that she had yet to take proper advantage of - she was sure she’d figure it out when she least expected it.

***

It was almost laughable how little the soundproofing worked in the Achievement Hunter office. 

Meg had long gotten used to having to redo takes because someone was shouting and they got picked up by the mics, and by someone she usually meant Michael. 

Today was no different. When she’d started the day she’d been in a pretty good mood, Ryan had been by the night before and they hadn't even done anything - well they didn't do  _ that _ much you had to take advantage of the time you had with him - they'd just hung out and laughed at how bad Gavin got at Tower Fall after a couple drinks. It had been enough to put her in a great mood, until now when she was fighting to be heard over a bunch of idiots.

"Just shut the fuck up, you sound like you're talking with a fucking dick in your mouth," Michael was shouting, she didn't have to guess who it was at.

She couldn't make out what Gavin said as easily, but she could hear the tone of his voice. She was sure there was at least one ‘that's not nice, lovely Michael’ in there somewhere. She was waiting for Michael to drag Ryan into things, it'd been how every argument between team nice dynamite had ended for the last week or two, Ryan had complained to her about it before Game Club one afternoon like she could control the two men anymore than he could.

Michael was in the middle of some weirdly specific comment about Gavin's ass when Geoff shouted at the two of them, loud enough that  _ she _ could distinctly hear him. "Just fucking make out already!"

It got very quiet after that, giving her the chance to finish her story, but her mind stayed stuck on that, very appealing, thought. Meg was pretty sure she figured out the thought that had been alluding her earlier, and it involved bringing the Joneses into her bedroom with Ryan.

Meg was going to wait until Ryan brought it up. It was one thing for him to want to sleep with them both separately, it was another thing entirely to bring up what she was about to. She was prepared to wait for a while, or to have him not say anything at all, but Ryan was getting good at surprising her. Meg almost couldn’t believe it when Ryan was walking up to her desk that same day with a very excited looking Lindsay following behind him. "So, um, I don't know how much you heard this afternoon," he said.

She thought about letting him keep going. Meg knew if she didn’t say anything Ryan would keep going until one of them interrupted, and she really got a kick out of seeing how dramatically Ryan could differ from his mad king persona; but she mercifully cut him off, teasing him could come later. "I heard just about everything before Geoff told them to kiss and make up."

"Right," he said, "well we were wondering, if you're okay with it that is, if we could..."

Meg wondered if Lindsay was having as much fun as she was, watching Ryan get flustered and trip over his words, the redhead was standing right behind him nodding along as he tried to get out whatever he was trying to say. "Ryan," Meg interrupted, "are you trying to propose a fivesome?"

"I think at that point it's an orgy," Lindsay piped in helpfully.

Ryan looked nervously between the two of them, like he knew he was the joke but couldn't decide if it was a good one or not. "I- no, well yes, but not if you don't want to. This is, things are fine now."

"But they could be so much better right, Ry," Lindsay said, eyes locked on Meg as she hooked her chin over his shoulder.

"So what's the hold up?" She asked, the answer coming to her not long after the words left her mouth, "Michael and Gavin. Don’t you worry about them, Ry, Lindsay and I can handle them, right?”

“Yep,” she agreed easily.

She grinned, “We got this Ryan, we’ll be having that orgy by the end of the week.”

Ryan flushed and walked away from the two of them without another word, she thought about shouting after him, but she could see Ashley heading their way and decided that however funny it would be to make Ryan uncomfortable would be outweighed by her co-anchor realizing that she wasn’t really joking.

Lindsay giggled, shooting her a wink before following after Ryan. Lindsay would handle Michael, and would probably play up some of the team nice dynamite stuff for the camera when it was out. Meg had a plan of her own though, and it involved finally taking advantage of that little quirk of Ryan’s, she was pretty sure if she played her cards right things would work out for all five of them.

***

She was honestly surprised at how Gavin was handling this Michael thing, it wasn’t like this was the first time Geoff had made a joke about the two of them. He was fidgety when they were driving home from work, refusing to look at or talk to her, and she knew him well enough not to ask as he tried to work out whatever he needed to.

She really tried to wait anyway. She knew that if she brought it up before he was ready he would just get bitchy but her own patience only went so far. By the end of the night she just couldn’t help but bring it up as she was curling up close to him and running a hand through his hair. “You know how much fun we’ve been having with Ryan,” she asked, trying to keep things light and conversational.

He wasn’t buying it, and suspiciously asked, “Yeah, why?”

“Wouldn’t it be even more fun if we had Michael and Lindsay too?”

“Michael’s a pleb,” came his immediate, half-hearted reply.

“Gavino, please. Drunk Gavin is all over Michael all the time, wouldn’t sober Gavin like to too?”

He huffed. Gavin had spent the entire time refusing to look at her, letting her run her fingers through his hair as he stared off. “C’mon, hasn’t Michael been acting a little flirty lately?” she asked.

“Maybe.”

“Don’t you think he was maybe a little upset that you asked Ryan to come over before you asked him?”

Gavin rolled his eyes, “What’re you on about?”

“He’s your boi, weren’t you a little upset when you found out he’d asked Ryan and hadn’t even thought of you?”

He flushed, color rising to his cheeks, though she was sure he was trying to hide whatever feelings were causing it to happen as he crossed his arms with a huff, “Maybe, but what about you and Lindsay?”

She pressed a kiss to his cheek, “Don’t worry about us, we’ve got our shit together already.”

“But,” he started to ask something else, like he didn’t know that she totally already had a plan in place.

“I got this,” she said, leaving him no more room to argue, “by this time this weekend half of Achievement Hunter will be in our bedroom.”

***

Part one of her plan was complete, not that it was really that hard to get Gavin to agree to something she wanted him to do, even if it was something he was pretending he didn’t want. Part two was going to be a little more difficult.

She managed to grab Michael as he was heading to the kitchen, he was a vital part of the second part of her plan. Meg hoped that Lindsay had had as much luck as she had with Gavin of convincing him that this was a good idea. Though the look she got when she stopped him said Lindsay hadn’t, but Meg soldiered on, it wasn’t  _ really  _ a glare so much as Michael looked wary of the fact that she was shouting at him from across the room.

“What do you want, Turney?”

“That’s no way to talk to someone who has information for you,” she chastised, letting a smile curl up on her lips as Michael looked suitably reprimanded.

“What,” he said again, she could see Ryan’s diet coke nestled in among the red bull Michael was grabbing for himself and she hoped several other people

“Just thought you’d like to know that Ryan gets all hot and bothered when you talk nerdy to him.”

She watched as his eyes went wide and he tripped, hitting the counter roughly, as he processed what she said. “What do you mean?”

She shrugged, mostly because she knew it would drive him crazy, “Haven’t gotten around to testing it out yet, but I think he gets off on people being smarter than him.”

She could tell he was thinking about what she was saying, that he was very intrigued by the images her words had spun in his mind.

“What are you getting out of this,” he asked, picking up the drinks that had scattered across the counter when he’d run into it.

“When Ryan finally snaps, you come over to our place and help us help him relieve the tension.” Michael stared at her for a minute, like he was looking for the trick or the camera that would pop out once he agreed. She pursed her lips, trying out the pout that usually got her her way when she was using it on Gavin, “We really want you guys to come over, Michael.”

He relented, she usually got her way when she started to pout like that. She hadn’t really expected much of a fight though, she’d seen how he looked at Gavin after a drink or two. She wasn’t stupid, that’s part of what made her think this was such a good idea in the first place, it wasn’t like she hadn’t been guilty of a wandering eye once or twice.

Well it was what made her think that the five of them might have a chance of working for at least a little while. What made her think that  _ this  _ plan was a good one was their mutual love of making Ryan squirm.

*** 

She saw her plan set in motion the next day. 

Gavin got ahold of Ryan first, Meg couldn’t help but smirk when she saw him grab ahold of Ryan’s arm in the kitchen. When Ryan caught her eye with a nervous look on his face, clearly trying to shake Gavin’s grip, she just sent him a cheery wave. She watched as Ryan managed to pull his arm from Gavin’s grasp but Ryan couldn’t quite shake him. He looked like he was getting more and more flustered as Gavin explained the science of the next Slow Mo Guys shoot he wanted to do.

Ryan found his escape in the bathroom, where Gavin finally left him alone, but only because he had to go shoot for Million Dollars for most of the day. He poked his head out a minute later, and when he didn’t see Gavin around he headed toward her desk to hide from him.

"Ryan, perfect, you're here! I need your help with this story I'm writing."

He gave her a searching look, trying to find any hint of deceit. She managed to school her face into one of wide eyed innocence, he sighed and leaned against her desk giving her a silent go ahead. “I just don’t know how to make this funny,” she started before launching into the specs for the Windows 10 update and the small changes between it and the previous iterations. Ryan was starting to look like he really regretted agreeing to help, as he squirmed with every word she said. “What do you think, Ryan?” she asked as she ran out of things to torture him with. He looked like a deer in the headlights as he looked back at her, but she was certain he’d caught every word she had said.

“Sounds gr-ood,” she smirked, loving that he was flubbing small words now he was so flustered, “great, good.”

She couldn’t get the smirk off her face though she tried to go back to the innocent look she’d had before as she asked, “Think you could help me with this other story too?”

She did manage to keep her laughter to herself as he fled from her desk, it wouldn’t be long until he broke, it would be much faster if he was headed where she hoped he was. 

Meg had called Michael the night before, he’d already agreed to her plan but she wanted to go over it. She learned way more about Five Nights than she had ever wanted to know, but Gavin’s complaining about having to play the fourth one got the two of them talking again. Actually talking, anyway, not just catty bickering to get Ryan’s attention. 

It was enough to make Meg realize how much she’d missed them. It had been a while since they'd gotten together with the Joneses but the four of them always been closer than most friends, she wondered if Ryan hadn’t come along if they would have tried things between the four of them a lot sooner. It didn’t matter, things were working out now for the best, even if they had to tease the hell out of Ryan to really get there.

She was genuinely surprised at how long it took Ryan as long as it did to get back to her desk. She assumed he got roped into a let’s play or something, or maybe Michael had been in one when he first got in the room. Her assumption was pretty much confirmed, when he dragged her chair away from her desk and into the corner away from the busiest parts of the office, not that anyone would have interrupted Ryan when he had his Mad King face on. 

“Meg,” he said in a dark, dangerous voice, hands braced on the arms of her chair as he leaned in close to her face.

She blinked up at him, reusing the same blank, wide eyed expression she’d used on him earlier, “Yeah, Ryan?”

“Is there a reason that after not talking to anyone all morning, Michael just pulled me into a Play Pals that won’t ever be released; and you want to know why it won’t ever be released, because Michael spent the entire time explaining the lore of the game and how it has one of the hardest achievements he’s ever gone after and how he planned to get that achievement.”

“So what’s the problem Ry-bread,” she asked, intentionally borrowing Michael’s nickname for the man.

He made a show of pretending to think about her question, like he didn’t already have the answer on the tip of his tongue, “Maybe it’s how Michael sounded like he was talking to himself for half an hour, while I walked my character into a wall and tried to remember how to make words.”

“To be fair, you have trouble making words on a normal day.”

He growled and leaned even closer in her face, “‘Oh yeah, Meg told me,’ and what is it exactly that you told him?”

She shuddered, she’d fully expected Ryan’s reaction to be like this, but she loved seeing him with flushed cheeks and dark eyes and a frustrated growl to his voice. “Just how much you like nerdy talk,” she said, trying for all the world to keep up the innocent charade cause the second it broke she was in trouble.

“And why is that?”

“Cause that’s how I got Michael to agree to come over, and cause it’s true. Did you know that the new Microsoft update is actually preventing people from playing games that they’ve bought because of the same DRM that they’ve been using to prevent pirating.”

Ryan looked surprised but snapped out of it quickly, grabbing her by the hand and pulling her out of the chair. She collided roughly with his chest, steadying herself with a hand to his shoulder while his came to catch her at the waist. Ryan leaned down to whisper in her ear, “I want you, Gavin, Michael, and Lindsay in a car headed back to your house so you can see what I think of your plan.” 

Meg moved through the Rooster Teeth office faster than she ever had before. The phrase, “Gavin, Michael, and Lindsay need to leave,” already posed on her lips before she could even get the door open. 

It looked like days of planning were getting ready to end exactly how she’d hoped they would, and with two hands in hers, she was sure this wouldn’t be the last time she was dragging them back to her house and into her bedroom.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my [tumblr](formosusiniquis.tumblr.com) August 27, 2015


End file.
